Above all else, it galled Kate Bremen that she didn’t see this betrayal coming. She was an award-winning reporter, for God’s sake, the sort of woman clever enough to notice even the smallest detail and see how it connected with a far greater picture. Sure, she’d gotten in her share of trouble, usually ending up bound and gagged in the process, but she always bounced back and saw to it that justice was done. Corrupt officials, human traffickers, crime bosses; there was no villain her snooping hadn’t been able to uncover, and it was a point of pride to the beautiful reporter that she was able to do so when so many others either couldn’t or simply lacked the courage to try.
Yet for all that, she’d failed to notice the viper in her midst, the enemy within just waiting for the right moment to betray her, and she growled in impotent rage as the cloth dug into the corners of her mouth to cleave her pouty pink lips. “Hold still, you little bitch,” a man’s voice snapped in frustration, while rough hand quickly knotted the gag in place behind her head. “Even now, you just keep giving me trouble, huh?"
“Mmmmppggghhh!” Kate snapped back, the first helpless tears blossoming in the corners of her beautiful blue eyes. Manuel DeSantos had been her editor at the Daily Standard for the past five years now, and she could not count the times she’d been hauled in before him for a lecture on the importance of playing it safe, or how one of the city’s elite figures had complained about a story she’d written. Deep down, she suspected that only the many accolades she’d earned the paper through her famous exposes, and the sales that went with them, had kept her harried superior from giving her the sack long ago. That he frequently inhibited her work was bad enough.
But that he was in bed with the city’s organized crime syndicates, and had been for years? That was a betrayal of everything they were supposed to stand for as journalists, and in the darkness of Manuel’s office, Kate felt her anger grow by the moment, pride wounded by how he’d played her for a fool all this time. That she was tied up yet again certainly wasn’t helping matters. Ropes kept her slender body pinioned above and below her breasts, binding her wrists behind her back and keeping her ankles crossed and locked together in front of her; not the most stringent bit of bondage she’d ever experienced, but effective enough that she wouldn’t be getting free any time soon. For the moment, she was reduced to offered gagged protests, and she unleashed a full torrent on her treacherous editor now, pale features going red with anger. “Mmmmppggh, mmmpppggghh! MMMMPPPGGGGHHH!”
“You just had to keep snooping around the docks, didn’t you?!” Fat fingers yanked at Kate’s short ashen-blonde locks, provoking a grunt of pain from the beautiful reporter. “Now the Carmines are threatening me, and all thanks to you! You couldn’t just leave well enough alone, could you?”
“Mmmmppggghhh!” Kate shouted in protest, unable to keep from betraying her fear at the mention of the city’s most infamous crime family. That Manuel was connected with those drug-dealing, flesh-peddling psychopaths… “MMMMPPPGGGHHHH!”
‘You just sit tight, my little snoop. Old Man Carmine has had his eye on you for a while now, so handing you over might just get me back into the family’s good graces. Shame you suddenly disappeared one day, but what can you expect in a place like this?”